CPC EMCR Seed and Travel Funding Grants 2025
The Charles Perkins Centre is very proud to support its CPC EMCR Initiative, a program specifically for and administered by EMCRs with generous support provided by the Nicholas Catchlove Early Career Researcher Development Fund.
The Seed Funding grants enable Charles Perkins Centre EMCRs to undertake pilot projects, enhancing their career progression and future opportunities and success.
The Travel Funding Grants support recipients to attend research-related activities - both in Australia and abroad - that contribute to their professional development.
The Charles Perkins Centre’s Joint Interim Academic Director, Professor Natasha Nassar, presented the awards at a ceremony in The Mackenzie Room at the Centre recently.
CPC EMCR Seed Funding Recipients 2025 | Left-right: Lucy Corbett, Holly Harris, Nikki Lee, Bitong Li, Duan Ni, Neda Raffiei, Rebecca Raeside, Matthew Waller
It’s particularly exciting to see the Committee’s ideas evolve into tangible support for bold, multidisciplinary research. The range of proposals this year is truly inspiring, and I look forward to seeing how these projects take shape and spark new directions in discovery.
“The Charles Perkins Centre remains proud to champion our vibrant EMCR community,” said Professor Natasha Nassar. “Since the Centre’s inception, our dedicated CPC EMCR Committee has been a cornerstone of our collaborative culture, fostering connections across disciplines and nurturing the next generation of research leaders.”
“It’s particularly exciting to see the Committee’s ideas – like the Seed and Travel Funding – evolve into tangible support for bold, multidisciplinary research,” she added. “The range of proposals this year is truly inspiring, and I look forward to seeing how these projects take shape and spark new directions in discovery.”
The CPC EMCR Committee’s Chair 2025, Dr Dougall Norris is delighted to be at the helm of the Charles Perkins Centre’s EMCR Initiative and, in particular, stewarding funding that has immediate benefits for its community.
“I’m thrilled to learn about the new ideas driven by our EMCRs and all of those that will benefit from the Travel Funding Grants to attend meetings and form new collaborations,” he said.
“The eight Seed Funding recipients truly are our researchers of the future, building toward real benefits on the mission of the Charles Perkins Centre. I can’t wait to hear about the impact of the Grants and I congratulate all the awardees!” said Dr Norris.
CPC EMCR Seed Funding Recipients 2025
Project | Supporting Teacher Wellbeing: Co-Designing a Framework for Health-Promoting Schools
This project aims to support teacher wellbeing by working with school principals to develop a practical, evidence-informed framework that can be adapted to different school contexts. Teachers face high levels of stress, burnout, and poor health, which can impact their decision to stay in the profession. Through interviews and co-design workshops with principals, the project will identify successful teacher wellbeing initiatives and create flexible guidelines for schools that can be implemented in schools. In turn, this project contributes to health-promoting school environments, higher teacher retention rates, and long-term health benefits across the education sector.
Project | ARFID and Feeding difficulties Identification in Neurodevelopmental Disorders: The ARFID-FIND Study
Children with neurodevelopmental conditions (NDCs) face significantly higher risks of obesity and eating disorders, including Avoidant Restrictive Food Intake Disorder (ARFID). However, healthcare systems lack effective early identification strategies of ARFID in vulnerable populations. This two-phase project will: 1) identify sub-populations of children with NDCs at risk of feeding difficulties through analysis of a large existing clinical dataset; and 2) evaluate the feasibility of implementing an ARFID screening tool with parents and healthcare professionals. Findings will establish evidence-based referral pathways and early detection approaches, optimizing nutritional outcomes and transforming how feeding difficulties are managed within Australia's developmental healthcare system.
Project | The effect of proline on the translatome of embryonic stem cells
The differentiation of embryonic stem (ES) cells into specialised cell types is a highly regulated process involving precisely timed and synchronised gene expression changes. In this project, we aim to utilise a novel technique that allows us to delve further into understanding the underlying mechanisms governing the control of this process. The data generated from this seed project will provide novel insight into the regulation of the differentiation of ES cells into neural progenitors as well as provide a strong foundation for future expansion of this project as well as expansion of this technique to other model cell systems.
Project | Deciphering Nanog transcription one molecule at a time in pluripotent stem cells
Embryonic stem cells require precise gene expression control to maintain pluripotency, yet the temporal coordination between key transcriptional regulators and their target genes remains unclear. Building on our newly developed multimodal imaging system to track the SOX2 dynamics at the Nanog locus along with real-time mRNA synthesis activity and locus mobility in live cells (Li et al., Cell, in revision; BioRxiv, 2024: https://doi.org/10.1101/2024.09.10.612363), we will investigate how co-factors such as OCT4, KLF4 and Nanog enhancer RNAs coordinate with SOX2 activity to shape Nanog transcriptional output. Understanding gene regulation mechanisms is essential to enhance cell reprogramming, bioengineering and molecular medicine-based approaches.
Project | AI-driven multi-disciplinary research: What’s the best practice?
Biomedical research is embracing a new era featuring expanding complex data. It remains challenging to explore and interpret these ever-growing big data. Lately, there are emerging breakthroughs in artificial intelligence (AI) like the development of AI agents using large language model (LLM) including ChatGPT. However, their applications in data-intensive biomedical research are still preliminary. Here, I propose to acquire state-of-the-art LLM-based AI tools, design customized analytical pipelines, test their performances towards research questions across multiple disciplines, and summarize a guideline for AI-driven biomedical research. This will help to advance understanding of AI tools, accelerate their applications, and fast-track cross-disciplinary research.
Project | Investigating dysregulated reward evaluation during periods of food restriction
Relapse during weight loss process remain a major challenge in treating obesity. Similar disruptions in reward processing are seen in addiction , where individuals in opioid withdrawal show increased reward-seeking after re-exposure to previously experienced rewards. These findings suggest that deprivation states can exaggerate reward valuation, leading to compulsive consumption. We hypothesize that a similar mechanism occurs during caloric restriction following diet-induced weigh gain, where even limited access to palatable food may inflate its perceived value, increasing the risk of overeating and relapse. This leads to our research question: Does early access to palatable food during weight loss promote reward-driven relapse?
Project | Everyday influences: a consumer-led mixed-methods study to evaluate social media impacts on youth health and wellbeing
Social media has impacts on youth health and wellbeing that are not fully understood. Our youth advisors have identified both positive and negative impacts of social media. This consumer-led research project uses innovative data collection methods to evaluate health and wellbeing content - nutrition, physical activity, mental health and body image - on social media, and its potential impacts to young people’s health and wellbeing. This research has potential to inform interventions and policies which enhance benefits and reduce harms of social media. This in turn aims to reduce the burden of chronic diseases, by focusing on prevention in youth.
Project | From Tentacle to Target: Uncovering new pain circuits via functional genomic screens for cellular response to deadly Irukandji venom
Chronic pain affects approximately 20% of Australians and costs $140 billion annually. Despite this, current pain therapies show limited efficacy or carry risk of tolerance, side effects or addiction. Hence there is a clear and unmet need for the development of novel painkillers. Carukia barnesi (colloquially known as Irukandji jellyfish) possesses an extraordinarily painful venom whose cellular targets are unknown. Our aim is to use this excruciating C. barnesi venom in unbiased, high-throughput whole genome screens to identify druggable targets for the development of a new generation of effective, safe and non-addictive painkillers.
CPC EMCR Travel Funding Recipients 2025
Ms Deborah Manandi – PhD student
Dr Masakazu Taira
Dr Priya Iyer
Dr Binh Nguyen
Dr Rebecca Raeside
Dr Yvonne Laird
Dr Kaylee Slater
Mr Robert Palmer – PhD student
Dr Kevin Law
Dr Sisi Jia
Dr Sophie Debs
Dr Reeja Nasir
Mr Jackie Zhou – PhD student
Dr Nikki Lee
Dr Linyang Liu
Dr Oana Marian
Ms Laura Ancellotti – PhD student